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life cycle engineering Articles

Sustainability recognises the interdependence of ecological, social and economic systems and nowhere is the concept of sustainability more critical than in developing nations, whose economies rely heavily on natural resources. Software for life cycle assessment (LCA) is becoming increasingly effective in evaluating the potential environmental and resource impacts of design and supply chain ...

This paper analyses the characteristics of Engineer-To-Order (ETO) companies, their markets, products, internal processes and supply chains. ETO companies design, manufacture and construct plant that is highly customised. The products are complex and supplied in low volume to global markets. Privatisation and deregulation have changed the competitive criteria and the products and services ...

The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique and of existing methods and databases. LCA is a technique to assess the potential environmental impact associated with a product or a service throughout its life cycle from raw material acquisition through production, use and disposal. The International ISO Standards provide principles, framework and ...

Energy and environmental issues are worldwide concerns in the 21st century. The authors propose that the best way to solve the energy-use problem is to account for all of a product's energy consumption information at the beginning of product design. Therefore, with the objective to promote energy-saving throughout the entire life cycle of general products or systems, the authors develop a new ...

Subgrade contamination is the leading cause of failure in both pavements and unpaved roads. Aggregate layers used to support the traffic or pavement typically rests on a subgrade of sand, silt or clay. Without permanent separation, two factors will undoubtedly lead to the contamination of the aggregate layers—fine-grained soils will enter into the voids of the aggregate, preventing it from ...

The concept of minimising life cycle cost can be rationally applied to determine a target reliability of structures. However, there has been a recent legal requirement to reduce CO2 emissions, therefore, the minimisation of life cycle CO2 emission could be an alternative approach in structural design. This paper explains the general formulae for deciding the optimum reliability by minimising the ...

In 2005, the American Society of Civil Engineers awarded a grade of D- to the nation’s wastewater systems based largely on the deterioration of sewage collection systems. That same year, the Bossier City Public Utilities Department in Louisiana restored a 5,000 square foot lift station using a 100 percent solids epoxy mortar system specifically designed to protect concrete in severe wastewater ...

Information-Gap Decision Theory (IGDT), an approach to robust decision making under severe uncertainty, is newly considered in the context of environmental performance affected by life cycle uncertainty. An IGDT decision strategy favours the design(s) that can endure the most estimation error while still guaranteeing no worse than some 'good enough' critical level of performance. In this paper, a ...

Kami Blake of 3E Company looks at the issue in managing EH&S data in the chemicals industry As regulations increase in number, scope and complexity, environmental, health and safety (EH&S) compliance is fast becoming a major concern that spans virtually every industry. All companies are increasingly affected by and subject to more stringent EH&S regulations and are being faced with ...

In order to promote the performance-based design methods used in civil engineering field, from the concept and approach of structure performance, the basic requirements of structural performance design are analysed, and the factors which need considering when choosing performance indexes are considered, and based on the existing structure design code, a three-level performance index system on ...

Biomass has been focused as a fuel resource because of its huge abundance and carbon–neutral characteristics. Thus, we attempted to use tree biomass as the resource to automotive fuel. From the global warming point of view, the biomass energy production from large–scale plantation is required, however, the land use should not be changed from crop field or forest land. In the present paper, the ...

A proposal based on Bioconservacion’s technology was selected as the winning bid in the public tender released in 2015, covering the design, procurement and construction of a biogas desulfurizing unit to be installed in the waste water treatment plant in Chania, Greece. With a population over 100,000, Chania is the second largest municipality in the Greek island of Crete. Its waste water ...

This paper considers developments in the area of industrial ecology applications and public policy, and the need to facilitate the proliferation of life cycle approaches in Africa through national development policies. It demonstrates the existing demand for systems approaches to sustainable production and consumption in Africa and identifies life cycle approaches as appropriate tools for ...

Life Cycle Assessment was used to evaluate environmental impacts associated to a full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Barcelona Metropolitan Area, with a treatment capacity of 2 million population equivalent, focussing on energy aspects and resources consumption. The wastewater line includes conventional pre-treatment, primary settler, activated sludge with nitrogen removal, and ...

Liquids mixing processes are extensively relates to human life. For example we could meet these processes in the laboratory chaotic advection researches, in oil processing branches, chemical, industrial and even in the food industry. Passing speed, quality of a compound and expense of energy are undoubtedly one of defining factors in developing process of compounding system. Despite that ...

Liquids mixing processes are extensively relates to human life. For example we could meet these processes in the laboratory chaotic advection researches, in oil processing branches, chemical, industrial and even in the food industry. Passing speed, quality of a compound and expense of energy are undoubtedly one of defining factors in developing process of compounding system. Despite that ...

INVENT Umwelt- und Verfahrenstechnik AG is a project partner in the BMBF project to remove microplastics from the water cycle. Water is an indispensable element and the basis of life. The consequence of the increasing use of ...

The minerals industry has made extensive efforts in sustainable development, and reporting of sustainability performance has been increasing. This paper examines the current role of legislated reporting, and the ways in which it can help streamline sustainability reporting, saving time and money. Two sets of sustainability metrics – the global reporting initiative (GRI) and ...

With the advent of potent network technology, software/system engineering has evolved from a traditional platform-centric focus into a network-centric paradigm where the 'system of systems' perspective has been the norm. Under this paradigm, architecting has become a critical process in the life cycle of software/system engineering. The need for a structured description of the architecting ...

Biofuel is a fuel from biological raw materials. Any animal or vegetable fat can become raw materials for production of the natural diesel practically. Biodiesel economy is really changed after technology was allowed to make fuel from algas, commercial crops, animal fats and even the fulfilled culinary oils can become the most widespread source of fats. This fuel is safe in production and use, it ...

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